One facet of maintaining household animals, i.e., pets, includes feeding them on a daily basis. For those owners who have more than one pet, the many challenges, at least when it comes time to feed the animals, are of no surprise. Those challenges are even more apparent when an owner has a multi-pet household that includes both cats and dogs. Generally, owners of cats place their food and water out all day for the cat to periodically visit as needed. Owners of dogs, because of their proclivities to excessively feed, place their food out in portions only once or twice a day. As dogs are generally known to eat a cat's food if left unattended, a system of protecting the cat's food is needed.
At least one known cat feeder system is described in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2010/0024736 and involves a box with small openings for the cat to enter and exit, with the opening being a defined size small enough for the cat to pass through and, at the same time, exclude larger pets, such as dogs. Box-type feeder systems require the cat to fully enter a confined and enclosed area, which is disagreeable to many cats, with the confined space discouraging and/or preventing those cats from entering the box to feed. Even worse, said feeder systems require the owner to place the food or water dish inside the box, making it cumbersome and inconvenient for an owner to constantly access the interior of the box and to clean up any mess or spillage from the food and water bowl. Known cat feeder devices requiring the owner to place the dish or bowl inside of the box also do not prevent the cat from making a mess as the bowl or dish is not prevented from moving. Moreover, those cat feeder devices that do have non-removable feeding bowls or sections make it very difficult to clean those sections when desired, as they are not easily maneuverable to clean.
Other known animal feeder devices that are intended to prevent larger animals from feeding on a smaller animal's food use an angled overhang or barrier. One such structure is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,842,096. The barrier or overhang is attached to a hinge and is in the form of a panel-like structure. The panel-like structure works to preclude larger animals from eating at specific food stations when attempting to access the feeder systems from the front. The structure does so by angling said barriers or overhangs to a certain degree of angle, thereby causing a larger animal to have to crouch in order to enter the box or to access the food areas. As the animal does not particularly like to, or cannot, eat in said position, the small animal's food is supposedly safe from the larger animal. Problematic with these types of feeder apparatuses, however, is the fact that they do not prevent larger animals from simply moving to the side and accessing the food containers from the side of the angled barrier or overhang. As such, those animal feeder apparatus do not prevent an excluded larger animal from the side of the structure to access the food or water. In addition, the structures described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,842,096 and the like are large structures that would not be able to prevent a dog from feeding.
As mentioned directly above, those known animal feeder apparatuses designed to prevent access to larger animals leave the sides of the barrier or overhang unprotected. Another such device is described and shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,222,990. This pet feeder also utilizes an angled roof to serve as a barrier to exclude larger animals and, as it is intended to be placed outside, to direct debris that may fall on the roof away from the food/water dishes. This design is especially problematic for those owners of dogs and cats in a multi-pet household as it does not prevent a dog or larger animal from also reaching its paw inside to move the food or water around. Although “curiosity killed the cat,” it is also known to lead dogs to seek and paw at food, if it is accessible or smelled. Many known cat feeder apparatuses, such as the patent described above, do not prevent a canine from shifting around and trying to remove the area where the food or water is held, nor is the roof adjustable to adapt to animals of various sizes. Additionally, those known animal feeder apparatuses that have a sized aperture for a small animal to stick its head inside to feed, also does not prevent a dog from sticking its paw inside the aperture. Lastly, many known feeder systems that do utilize angled barriers or overhangs are not adjustable to account for the size of the larger animal(s) desired to be excluded or for a small animal as they grow.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.